


Bloodswap Shorts

by Moondragon8



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia is Terrible, Gen, Hemospectrum Shift
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22086298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moondragon8/pseuds/Moondragon8
Summary: A collection of short stories about blood, and colors, and alternate paths.
Kudos: 5





	1. aradia

**Author's Note:**

> hm. fair warning, aradia as a Time player has this...running theme of death. so there's a lot of death mentions in here, just fyi.  
> anyway, I'll probably do one of these for each beta troll (except maybe eridan equius and gamzee, for personal reasons) and then maybe some of the alpha trolls??

**nitram**

She was polite. Very, very polite. It hurt her sometimes, the politeness, because sometimes she just wanted to SCREAM and SMASH THINGS and arrrrrgh. 

But she couldn't. She knew her place. One step out of line and boom-no more Aradia. And she was very, very afraid to die. 

So she was polite and quiet and knew her place and kept her whips clenched tight in her fists in case she needed to defend herself. Because she wanted to live, more than anything, and to live, one had to be polite.

**captor**

Her head ached most of the time. The voices of the dead clamored in her head, begging for relevance, a chance, a little more time.

 _I can't give it to you,_ she thought back, glaring at the ground as she stumbled through the town. Trolls made an effort to avoid her-the weird goldblood always talking to herself. That was fine. She preferred it that way. 

The dead wanted, more than anything, to live. Aradia wanted, more than anything, a break. A rest. 

To try and get it, she researched-how to revive people. Necromancy. She didn't come up with anything, but she kept researching. Meanwhile, the dead kept dying. She was surrounded by ghosts. 

Eventually, she would become one, and then maybe she would be able to rest. 

**vantas**

She was a mysterious girl, that Aradia. Strange and not often seen. She came out of her house only every so often, dressed all in gray without a shred of color to her name. She didn't speak to many others. The assumption, generally, was that she was a rustblood who had had her heart, or perhaps her diamond, broken. There were other rumors, too, but they were more wild and silly. 

Aradia liked all of the rumors. Some she even wished were true. 

But the truth was that each night, behind closed shades and locked doors, Aradia Vantas screamed in anger at the world that had doomed her to loneliness, angry screams that sometimes were supposed to be songs but mostly were just empty curses. 

Then she cried bright red tears, and finally, she slept.

Aradia was never meant to be happy, and she had accepted that. She had settled for mysterious.

**lejion**

Aradia was wild, and Aradia was free.

She was alone in a cold forest, true, but she was free-free from the restrictions and the drones and the fear her friends talked about, free to roam and discover for herself and for no one else. She found old, empty hives in the forest sometimes, and she moved from hive to hive every day. She considered herself a sort of archeologist, finding stories in the emptiness, facts in the things they left behind. She told those stories to whoever would listen.

Her friends asked her why she didn't just pick one and stay, or better yet, come live with them, where it was safe, at least from lusii, and there was food, although not that much, on a regular basis. Aradia shrugged. Her lusus made her keep moving, as if there was some reason, but really Aradia didn't mind. 

Was she lonely? Maybe. But she was free, and that was the most important. 

**maryam**

Aradia wasn't quite suited for the life fate had given her. But that was okay. She loved her lusus, she really did, and she was prepared to care for the Mother Grub even if she did prefer fresh air to dark caves and bare feet to neat shoes. 

She would be ready, one day, to care for the new Mother Grub, because it was an important duty and Aradia Maryam was nothing if not responsible. But until then, she had to squeeze in every moment of fresh air and bare feet and shining stars before it was all gone away.

**pyrope**

Tealbloods were social, and Aradia was no exception. She was friendly, bright, charming, and able to throw really great parties. Perhaps she wasn't quite serious enough to be a legislacetor someday, but she had no enemies, and that was a good thing.

Aradia threw wonderful parties, with dancing and good food, but if someone got too rowdy, she would shut them down in a second-no deaths, just a spot of blood on her hands and a troll or two thrown outside, and the party carried on until everyone trickled home. 

Aradia was friendly and bright, yes, but she was not someone to be messed with, and for that reason, her parties were considered rather exclusive, maybe even a bit risky-because everyone knew that absolutely no bloodshed was allowed at Aradia's parties, or the trolls involved would find themselves taken down in under a minute by a troll wearing a ponytail and a smile. 

Perhaps she would make a good legislacetor someday after all.

**serket**

Such a nice girl, that Aradia Serket. So proper, so neat. 

So deadly. 

Everyone respected Aradia. Everyone also knew not to cross Aradia. They-the smart ones, anyway,-knew to stay out of the way of the girl in the tidy clothes and too-wide smile, or you'd find yourself with a knife in place of a handshake. 

The ones who weren't smart were dead. 

Aradia figured it was natural selection, right? Smarter trolls didn't talk to her, so smarter trolls lived, and got to contribute to the genetic pile, and therefore would make even smarter trolls. Aradia was just helping the process along a little. 

Plus, it helped _her_ not get naturally selected, too. There was that. 

Of course, it meant eventually no troll would talk to her, and then she'd be out of luck, but Aradia figured she'd get to that when the time came. 

**zahhak**

Aradia knew she was lucky. 

Oh, she knew. And it hurt her like hell. 

She was practically the highest blood next to purple, and she wouldn't want to be anything else. 

She just wished her friends could be highblooded with her. 

She saw them struggle for things that were so easy for her, either because of her privilege or her strength, and she longed to help, to do something for them. They stubbornly refused her help ("WHAT ARE YOU, FLIRTING WITH ME?"), and that was fine, but she couldn't help feeling like she was at fault somehow for their problems. 

She didn't want to give up her privilege. Did that make her a bad person?

She didn't know, but god damn it, it hurt. 

**makara**

Aradia didn't really _feel_ things. She didn't really know why. She sometimes felt hungry or tired, and if one of her friends said they were hurt she wanted that to not be true, but mostly she just felt sort of empty. Blank. 

People had offered solutions. The clowns had all offered their strange religion, but it did nothing for her. Neither did the sopor slime-that only seemed to dull her senses more. Drawing, music, even fighting-none of it seemed to spark emotions. 

But there was one thing-a strange and risky thing, but it made her feel _something._

Exploring, digging, getting dirt in her hair and on her skirt, feeling the sting of the night winds, feeling the scrape of old rocks and bones against her hands- _that_ was something. It made her feel. Made her feel happy. 

**ampora**

Aradia could genuinely have cared less about the hemospectrum. What she liked was exploring. 

Her fins and gills didn't mean anything to her except that they let her dive, dive down down deep into the blue and see the horror and beauty of the ocean.

She couldn't go too far, or the pressure would crush her altogether, but sometimes she thought that wouldn't be a bad way to die.

But for now, she stayed relatively safe and used traps and machines to dig treasures from the seafloor.

"Those aren't treasures," her friends would say. "It's just old seadweller stuff. Who cares?"

But Aradia cared. She cared very much. 

**peixes**

_One day, you will fight her. You will win, and lead. Or you will lose, and die._

It was an inevitability. Aradia would have to do it. And outwardly, she knew that. 

But inwardly, some part of her kept thinking....

_Do I have to? Is there some other way?_

Maybe she could avoid fighting altogether. Maybe she could circumnativage death like a sailor on a ship. 

Maybe she could erase the inevitable. 

She was a fuchsia. She made the rules. 

It stood to reason she should be able to break them. 


	2. tavros

**medigo**

_Ugh._

It was not worth it. Rebellion, freedom, any of the stuff his friends talked about with such enthusiasm and passion-it wasn't worth the effort. People had tried in the past, and what had happened to them? 

Failure. 

Tavros, whatever he was, was not a failure.

But he was a coward. 

**captor**

Part of the point of science was to experiment. Right? Scientists didn't give up when something bad happened, like, say, the loss of your legs and with that the loss of several people you had thought were friends. No, scientists didn't _need_ friends! Scientists could solve their own problems. 

So Tavros became a scientist.

The experiments were hard. Most of them failed. None of them gave him back his legs. Some helped with the movement issue. Most didn't. 

His friends offered help, solace-he turned them down. He worked alone. 

When he finally made a working pair, he rejoiced.   
But he did it alone. 

**vantas**

Tavros thought that if he was going to be a mutant, he should have at least been a mutant in a cool way. Something like...wings! Having wings would have been amazing. He would be able to just fly away from all the drones hunting him down. 

But noooo, he had to be just a boring ordinary mutant with bright red blood that offered no help and left him constantly on the run. 

So lame. 

**lejion**

It was unusual for a troll to get a job at such a young age, but something about lusii care just _spoke_ to Tavros. 

Not literally, of course-he didn't have any sort of psiionics. But the lusii were nice and kind. They didn't bother him or ask questions about his legs. They just...existed. And wanted food. 

It was easier than dealing with trolls, that was for sure. 

**maryam**

Tavros wasn't a normal jadeblood.

Well, that was obvious. Jades were normally female, after all. And he wasn't. 

But he was different in other ways, too! Like his style. Which was non-existent. But most jadebloods-well, some jadebloods-well, most of the ones he knew, anyway-cared a LOT about style. Or at least a little. So he was being different, by not caring!

Plus, he just didn't care about things in general. He was...detached. In a cool way, obviously, not a weird way, but just like he didn't have _time_ for your _nonsense._ It was a very cool thing to do. Probably. 

Tavros Maryam was a very weird troll. It was hard, being so weird. It took a lot of effort. But it was worth it. Because in the end, no one was anything like him.

No one. 

**pyrope**

"What'll it be?" Terezi asked over Trollian. Of course, she used her ridiculous quirk, but quirks gave Tavros a headache, so he ignored them. "What alignment do you think you'll play?"  
Tavros considered. Of course, the law dictated he remain Lawful Good, or at least Lawful Neutral, but it was always fun to try something new, and sometimes he wondered...

"Chaotic Good," he responded. "I'll play Chaotic Good."

**serket**

_Will you walk into my parlor? said the spider to the fly..._

Tavros Serket was such a polite boy. So charming, so well-mannered. Any smart lowblood would be dying to get into his quadrants. 

_'Tis the prettiest little parlor that you ever did spy_

Literally dying. Lowbloods were quite desperate sometimes. It was funny. 

_The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, and I have many pretty things to show you while you are there._

Tavros could be genuinely sweet when he wanted to be. He'd even met a few trolls who could have been his friends had they not died so soon after he'd met them. It was really sad whenever that happened. But oh well, death happens to all of us eventually. And he did have _some_ friends who weren't dead, even if they weren't very friendly at times. 

_"Oh no no!" said the little fly, "to ask me is in vain, for who goes up your winding stair can never come down again."_

Tavros sighed and picked up the latest one. He tried to brush some of the blood off her face, but it wound up smearing instead. She had been really nice, for a bronzeblood. 

"It's okay," he told her. "You died for a good cause! By dying, you kept me alive! And you said you liked me, so you'd want to keep me alive, right?"  
There was silence. Of course there was.

"Right," Tavros said, and hummed a little tune as he made his way to his lusus. 

_For who goes up your winding stair can never come down again._

**zahhak**

Lusii riding wasn't exactly a lucrative career, but what did Tavros care? He didn't need money, he was a highblood! He could ride lusii all day and no one could stop him. 

Well, a few people could stop him, and people asked a lot why he wasn't strong like all the other indigos, but whatever!! He was far enough away that people rarely came to visit, so he was basically free to do whatever he wanted

"Giddyup!" he cried to one of the musclebeasts, and he rode like the wind. 

**makara**

Fairies were real. Tavros knew it, because they had spoken to him. Whenever he took a bite of sopor, they appeared, telling him to rise, to fight, that he was a hero! 

Tavros believed them, no matter what his friends said. The fairies liked him, and he would be a hero. 

Someday. 

**ampora**

Every time someone asked Tavros how he lost his legs, he gave a different answer. 

Bitten off by a shark, or an oyster, or his own lusus. 

Sliced off in a fight, or FLARPING, or by a crazy ex-kismesis. 

The last one was the closest to true, although he never gave details beyond that. The truth was far too embarrassing. 

**peixes**

Tavros was a really nice guy. Really! He was just super sweet all of the time, and he always gave good advice, and he could change the rules to make your existence illegal if he wanted to but he _wasn't going to_ because that's how nice he was!

Saying or implying otherwise is illegal. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled with this one a bit. idk why. I guess I just don't vibe with Tavros as much as I do other characters.  
> also normally jadebloods are my FAV but jade tavros annoys me so much. got  
> uh. anyway. HAPPY METEOR DAY!!!


End file.
